


Brienne the True

by sbarmarj



Series: The Lion's Pride [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Canonical Character Death, Daenerys is a badass, Gen, Minor Violence, Women Being Awesome, and Brienne is the best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 05:31:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sbarmarj/pseuds/sbarmarj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“To love is to make foolish choices.” Brienne knows her voice sounds weary when she speaks. It is a lesson she has learned well.</p><p>“And, yet we still love. My Hand thinks that you killed Stannis to protect Sansa and to prove your loyalty to me. I think you killed him because he killed your cub.” </p><p>Daenerys calls Brienne to King's Landing and to talk about motherhood and ask Brienne to swear an oath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brienne the True

**Author's Note:**

> These characters just keep writing themselves. I promise that Brienne and Jaime will actually be together in the next entry. 
> 
> Un-beta'd and written pretty quickly so I am certain there are some less than solid grammatical choices.
> 
> GRRM still owns this world, and I am sure he would be less than please with me playing in his sandbox.

_Your sister is well._

Brienne does not remember when she first started talking to the dead. Sometime after Galladon died. Her father suggested it. She use to speak aloud to him throughout the day, wandering along the beach, eating breakfast, during lessons and she would pause for her brother’s answers even when they didn’t come.

She stopped when one of her father’s women laughed at her. It was not the kind laughter of a mother, and it cut deeper than any of the comments she made about Brienne’s lack of beauty. Even as a child, she knew she wasn’t pretty, but she had never thought that she was odd. She stayed silent even after her father cast the woman out of his bed. She learned to let her actions speak for her.

But, Brienne kept talking to the dead, just silently. Now she is here continuing the habit by talking to a dead cub. Not that he cares for any of her musings.

_Your father was well when I left him. He and Sansa talk about you sometimes. If you were still alive I am sure your uncle would take you flying on his dragon. Sansa thinks that you would like that. She will not fly with Tyrion or with Bran. Only once with the Dragon Queen, and I think that was just to prove a wolf does not cower._

She is not really sure what else to say. This conversation is even more awkward than her visit to Dorne. At least, she and Myrcella seemed to reach a peace, but Brienne never met this boy and Jaime will not talk about him to her.

She has nothing to say to his older brother. As far as she is concerned the only sadness in Joffrey’s death is that it drove a wedge between the Tyrion and Jaime, which Tommen’s death cemented.

 _I am sorry that I have not visited before._ In truth, Brienne never intended to visit this crypt and meet Jaime’s youngest cub. She is here because Daenerys requested her presence in King’s Landing, and she is still here a week after her ship landed because the queen has not found time to talk to her. Left to her own devices Brienne has spent most of the time in the training yards taking her frustration out on the Dragon Queen’s knights. Tyrion suggested she stop beating the poor men, and explore the city instead before she returns to the barren north.

_I would have taught you to fight, and to dive for rocks in my favorite cove when you came to Tarth. I think we would have gotten along._

Brienne’s pointless ramble is cut off by approaching footsteps and the faint clanking of armor. Even here, and in peace, her hand reaches for Oathkeeper.

“Well met Lady Knight.”

As disconcerting as these dead kings are, the Dragon Queen and her unearthly beauty are more unsettling. Even now she is cloaked in authority, her current condition making her seem more dangerous than before.

She is flanked by a handful of guards; knights Brienne has practiced against these last few days. Most have bruises she gave them.

“Leave us.” None of the guards, question the command. They slowly retreat, out of earshot, and turn their backs. Brienne is surprised they have not requested her weapons.

“It’s a chilling place, isn’t it?” Daenerys looks around her. “I much prefer my end to be in fire. Does Tarth still send their dead to the deep?”

“Aye, Your Grace.” Brienne remembers her mother’s body wrapped in linen and rocks. She lost sight of her sinking body quickly, even in Tarth’s sapphire waters.

“Brienne the Blue, Lady Knight of Tarth.”

“Yes, Your Grace?”

“It was not a question. I expected to meet an honorless Kingslayer and a maid at the Wall.”

Brienne nods, but she has no idea what the queen means.

“I should not toy with you so. I am sorry.” At this the Dragon Queen trains her entire attention on Brienne, tracking her reaction. Even though Brienne has learned to live with a lion, she is still understands how to be a mouse, and a mouse should always be concerned when a predator looks its way.

Brienne is not sure what Daenerys sees, but the Dragon seems satisfied with the mouse.

“My Hand told me your husband swore only one vow at your wedding—he would honor any vow you made. Tyrion never told me what you swore.”

It was the last vow Jaime swore and she does not think that he will swear another before his death, but Brienne was not going to tell this queen that.

“I swore to love him.” Not the Lion of Lannister, not the Lord Commander of the Kingsgaurd, not the Kingslayer. She swore to love ornery, sharp, beautiful, reckless, Jaime. It was the easiest oath she has ever made, and one she will keep long after her bones have turned to dust.

“That was all?”

The queen gives her another long evaluating look, not shying away from Brienne’s scarred face. Brienne does not know what to say so she holds her silence.

“At least he knows your value. Most men would not.” The Dragon Queen sounds like she understands the unbalanced scales men use to weigh a woman’s worth.

Brienne can taste a response on the tip of her tongue, but she swallows it. People notice her influence on Jaime, yet they ignore that she has assumed a lion’s confidence from him. He would have certainly told this woman his wife had no time or interest in having most men in her bed. But, Ser Goodwin taught Brienne patience with a sword, and to hold back her strength in the initial rounds of a fight. It’s a lesson equally applicable to conversations with queens.

The Queen seems in no hurry for this conversation to proceed. She trails her fingers around Tommen’s crypt with a slow reverence Brienne recognizes. Even here in the damp coolness, Daenerys still moves with deep burning energy. She makes Brienne think of a flame that draws moths to it until their wings are singed.

“I never wished this boy dead.”

“I know, Your Grace.” Brienne was raised to govern, even if it was only a rocky isle. She knows the difference between a wish, and necessity. All leaders do. Stannis spared the Dragon Queen ordering this child to die, but it is easier to remove a head than it is to remove a crown. Sansa is proof of that.

“Did your husband really think declaring Tommen his bastard would save him?”

Brienne has never asked herself this question, or let her heart wonder at an answer. She finds it easier to study Tommen’s death mask than to consider what to say, though she knows she must answer.

“I think he was desperate to save his child. Jaime has always made reckless choices when it comes to the ones he loves.”

Brienne knows now that the declaration was the final incentive Stannis needed to kill his almost nephew. When Stannis plunged his sword into Tommen’s heart, and then neatly beheaded him to leave no doubt of a job well done, he did not earn the name kinslayer, only childkiller. He may have killed his brother in everyway but the actual act, however he lacked Tyrion’s insolence to claim the name proudly, and according to Tyrion he was too hidebound to break his honor in the light of day. Stannis would have hesitated to kill the child if the world still thought Tommen might be his blood.

Brienne did not see how Jaime’s move checkmated his son, but Tyrion did. He told Jaime how badly he played the game when they were confronted with his son’s head on a stake greeting them in King’s Landing. Jaime could have forgiven his brother’s lie about Joffery’s death, but Jaime could not forgive Tyrion holding his tongue when Jaime chose to speak. His daughter was cast aside and his son killed and Tyrion knew it would happen.

“I once made a horrible choice because I was desperate to save someone I loved.” Daenerys is not a queen when she says it.

“To love is to make foolish choices.” Brienne knows her voice sounds weary when she speaks. It is a lesson she has learned well.

“And, yet we still love. My Hand thinks that you killed Stannis to protect Sansa and to prove your loyalty to me.”

Brienne answers before she thinks, “Tyrion forgets that not everyone is cunning as he is.”

She likes the Imp more than she expected, but it can be annoying to be perpetually outclassed in a game she is forced to play.

“Yes, and he has never had a child.”

“Neither have I, Your Grace.”

The Dragon Queen turns and really looks at Brienne. She refuses to release the taller woman’s eyes.

“I have not birthed a living child, but it does not make me less of a mother.” As she speaks Daenerys drops her hand to swollen belly and looks like every expectant mother Brienne has ever seen. Brienne knows it is best to drink moon tea every morning, but she wonders what it would feel like to have a life quicken in her—to protect a babe with her skin and bones instead of a sword.

Leaving her hand protectively over her child, the Queen continues, “Have you ever seen a lion’s pride?”

Brienne shakes her head. She has only seen the great pathetic beast that was kept caged at Casterly Rock before Tyrion ordered it slaughtered in an act of mercy.

“The Prince of Dorne has told me that it is the lioness that hunts and kills to feed and protect their families. It’s the lion’s pride only in name. I think you killed Stannis because he killed your cub.”

Brienne wants to shrug her shoulders. She knows Septa Rouelle would roll in her watery grave if her charge was so unladylike, and in the presence of the queen! However, crude physical communication is far more appealing than trying to explain her motivation in words. As is generally the case when torn between manners and doing what she wants, Brienne does nothing in response. Daenerys seems unbothered by Brienne’s withholding having somehow read the truth in the older woman’s face.

“Some refer to you as a matched set.” Brienne can hear the Queen’s unsaid words, _but you are not. One acted with honor, the other out of love._

At this Brienne does grimace and can feel her cursed blush rising even in this cool room. No one actually calls her a Kingslayer. She swore no oaths to Stannis or bowed her knee to him, but she still killed him in the Great Hall while the Iron Throne was warm with his memory.

“You’ve both killed kings, but Jaime did it for the kingdom and you did it for your son.” Daenerys seems to know Brienne’s unvoiced thoughts.

Brienne finds this conversation more and more unsettling and wishes she knew a way to excuse herself. She begins to think that the guards stationed at the crypts’ entrances are not to insure privacy, but to keep her here. Daenerys has been far too forthright with her since she started to talk.

“You look like a mouse trapped by a cat. I did not ask you to come here to cage you, my lady. I wish to ask you for a favor and an oath.”

Brienne can feel her scar stretch as her surprise and concern shows across her face.

“I have already sworn an oath to you, my queen.”

“Yes, you swore to never lead the North against me, and Tarth’s allegiance. Those were the oaths of a Knight to a Queen, and a vassal to a liege. I would like you swear an oath to me as a mother.”

“Of course, Your Grace. I will do everything in my power to see your babe safely on the Iron Throne.”

“While I would appreciate that promise, it is not what I would ask of you.” For the first time since she arrived Daenerys hesitates. Brienne is even more unsettled by this doubt than the Queen’s previous confidence.

“You know what my father was. But my dreams have shown me what would have happened to this realm if my father had lived. What would have happened to me if Jaime had not killed him. My kingdom and my people—my children—cannot survive another king like him. Or Joffrey, or so many of these other men.”

Daenerys’ eyes scan the crypts. Brienne realizes these monuments to the dead are also warnings to the living.

“I do not know that I will be here to make my son into the King Westeros needs. Will you promise me if my son is not fit to sit on the Iron Throne that you will protect my children?”

Now, that Brienne knows the Queen’s last move she can see each play that brought them here.

“And if I refuse to bind myself and my husband, what then?”

“You will return to the North. After that I do not know what you will chose.”

Brienne nods. She believes Daenerys. If she wants to walk away, she is free to go and they will never speak of this conversation again. Only the dead will bear witness, and their silence is assured.

The Dragon Queen holds her peace, this is a decision Brienne must make on her own.

_Kings, what should I do?_

None of them answer, and Brienne feels a fool for wanting their council on whether to agree to kill a king.

Jaime swore to honor only her oaths because he trusted her honor to shine through the dark game of blood, duty, and crowns. She knows her answer.

Brienne drops to one knee, with the weight of Oathkeeper at her hip, and bows her head.

“Your Grace, as a Kingslayer I swear to serve your child with honor and love, and I promise as a mother to protect your children.”

She lifts her eyes and meets Daenerys’ gaze. Brienne will always be thankful that she was never meant to be a Queen. Daenerys stretches her hand down to Brienne’s, and gently pulls the bigger woman to her feet.

“Thank you Brienne the True. May you never need to fulfill your promise, or live up to your husband’s name.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Comments and kudos are wicked awesome and they distract me from doing my real work i.e. they make me write more fic!


End file.
